Teaching What Really Happened: How to Avoid the Tyranny of Textbooks and Get Students Excited About Doing History

by James W. Loewen

  Since not all students learn the same way, a range of activities provides different ways to learn and different ways to shine. When students show they can do good work in one mode—maybe a graphic portrayal10 or a well-conducted interview—that helps teachers to expect more from them in other settings. “Yes, you can write a good paper, Ernie. Do you remember that graphic you did? That was brilliant!” High expectations (and self-expectations) play a key role in learning, as the next chapter will show.

  GETTING THE PRINCIPAL ON BOARD

  Teachers who rely on the textbook imagine all kinds of bad things will be visited upon them by administrators, parents, and even students if they deviate. Hence, they relax into the security of self-censorship and reliance on the textbook. Usually they worry needlessly. In practice most teachers have substantial freedom. As they move away from relying on the textbook, their courses become more interesting, so their students grow more interested. Students rarely disrupt a class they relish. Parents rarely come in and chastise teachers because their children like a class.

  Nevertheless, it’s crucial to bring on board the principal and, in schools large enough to have departments, the department chair. They are teachers’ first line of defense against parental complaints. Besides, they are professional educators who may have good advice. As soon as teachers realize that the old textbook-centric method doesn’t really work, they should talk with their superiors about the problems. If they have been brought in from the start, principals cannot infer that the teacher is a naïve neophyte or rabble-rousing radical.

  Teachers then gain their superiors’ cooperation by showing them careful preparation. Before the school year begins, teachers develop lesson plans tying each of their 30–50 topics to at least one skill, as discussed above. These plans also lay out a schedule for the year. What will go on in class from day to day, the main tasks students will do, the basis of their grades—all these need to be clear. Of course, there is room to be flexible, but it is crucial not to fall behind. Teachers can then compose a preface that amounts to an argument for their new approach. The first pages of Lies My Teacher Told Me provide ammunition. They suggest four reasons why the traditional textbook-centric course does not work:

  Students find it boring. Across the United States, history is the field least liked by students. Because this new approach will intrigue students, they will not find it boring.

  Students don’t learn much, especially when tested a year or more later. Because this new approach will prompt students to do good work, they will score well on statewide tests, at least to the extent that these tests measure critical reading, writing, and other important skills.

  In history, large gaps separate the performance of whites and nonwhites, males and females, and rich and poor—larger than in any other field. Because it taps a variety of skills, this new approach will help a variety of students, including some formerly low-performing students, to do well.

  College professors don’t respect or reward students who recall 6,000 textbook twigs from high school. Some even prefer that their charges have had less of such history. This new approach—emphasizing primary versus secondary sources, historiography, etc.—will stand students in better stead in college history courses. Indeed, students who can read critically, write coherently, create tables, and so on, will do well in most college courses, not just history.

  Let me be first to admit that each of the four charges above is an over-generalization. Students find a substantial proportion—maybe 30%?—of U.S. history courses fascinating and learn a lot from them. Such courses may especially influence “have-not” students, getting them to do history, in the process doing their best high school work. College professors hardly put down those high school history courses. As best-selling historian Howard Zinn suggested some years ago at a public forum in Boston, “Maybe you should have called your book Lies 70% of My Teachers Told Me.” But those are the history and social studies courses that are already not textbook-centric. As teachers make their courses less reliant on the textbook, they can use the above four criticisms to justify their new strategy.

  Next, teachers can share their plans, including their rationale, with their principal and department chair. Since principals are busy, they will want about five minutes of discussion about it, but those five minutes will be well spent. Teachers can invite their superiors’ input on whether the new methods will interest and involve students. Of course, teachers must also assess administrators’ strengths and quirks to make strategic presentations.

  As the year goes by, teachers may be surprised to find that they have little need for their principal’s backup, because they will engender few parental complaints. That’s because the students will like and feel challenged by the new approach.

  In some districts, schools have autonomy to choose textbooks. If yours is in that happy situation, consider adopting a shorter one. The catalog of Social Studies School Service carries several 300-page paperback textbooks on U.S. history, including some for potential citizens who are taking the INS citizenship exam. Since full-sized textbooks now retail for as much as $108 and cost $70 even when ordered in quantity, they often cost $12 per year when amortized over six students and six years. For about the same cost, students could own their own paperback textbook. Then they have the autonomy to take notes in the margins, carry on a “dialogue” with the author, and insert flags to organize the chapter for better understanding. And then they take the book with them when they graduate. Best of all, using a 300-page paperback almost obliges the teacher to supplement and to get students doing a variety of special projects like those advocated here.

  COPING WITH REASONS TO TEACH “AS USUAL”

  Reasons that seem sound have led many teachers to try to cover everything. These forces push teachers toward staying in the traditional textbook-dominated rut. This section provides some resources for dealing with them.

  First is fear of the unknown. It seems easier just to “teach the book,” especially since the book comes with ancillaries from the publisher like lesson plans, lecture outlines, and videos. Deep down, however, teachers of U.S. history know that relying on the textbook is poor pedagogy. Very few brag about how their textbook structures their course or how they take most of their exam questions from the CD the publisher included with the teacher’s edition. Moreover, even though the first year seems a scary leap of faith, teachers will improve. Some topics will fizzle the first time, but not the next. No such learning curve is intrinsic to just teaching the book.

  Second, so-called “standardized” tests can intimidate teachers from innovating. From the MCAS in Massachusetts to Virginia’s SOLs to the CSTs in California, state after state has turned to multiple-choice tests to measure student progress. Teachers can reasonably infer that their principal, school district, state, and nation want them to drill pupils in twig history. Surely memorized details are not what Americans need, however. After all, after they graduate, students can always find most twigs on the web when they need them.

  Some APUSH teachers particularly feel the need to emphasize textbook knowledge. They don’t want to disadvantage their students by leaving out a twig that gets asked on the APUSH test. Their concern, while understandable, leads them to the wrong conclusion. The A.P. test in U.S. history isn’t bad. In addition to the usual multiple-choice items, it features a “Document-Based Question” (DBQ) and other essay questions. The DBQ supplies students with a handful of sources related to a given era or issue, then asks them to write an essay using some of these documents to answer a question. Every May, ETS assembles a collection of mostly superior high school history teachers to evaluate the results. Many APUSH teachers have found that the way to get young people to retain twice as much history is not by teaching twice as many twigs, but by making their courses twice as interesting. When a history course has aroused students to think about matters that interest them, then they will connect the twigs with trunks and branches of issues. Then the details will stick in their minds for ye
ars, perhaps forever.11

  Please note: I am not actually against twigs. I think students should know in which half-century the Civil War was fought, or that Lyndon Johnson got the Voting Rights Act through Congress in about 1965. Without some details, students have no context for thinking about the next historical claim they encounter. Teachers should require appropriate information, including twigs, within the assigned tasks that tie into their 30–50 topics and within the essay items on their tests. The way to get students to recall more twigs is not by trying to teach more twigs. That simply doesn’t work. It even bores teachers. The head of the history department in an elite Washington, D.C., prep school told me he never assigned himself the Advanced Placement course, since he found it so boring. Why? Because he felt he had to teach twice as many details as he did in the regular course, so students would do well on the exam.

  On the other hand, if the new method—whatever it is—excites the teacher, it will doubtless excite his or her students. Hence, it will work, even if by “work” we mean twig retention. My emails tell me so. An American history teacher in New Mexico wrote:

  At the beginning of the semester, I made [my students] a wager that, even though they were not going to be tested on the historical facts, they would nevertheless remember more of the facts than they would have from an ordinary textbook. One hundred percent of the students vouched that this was true for each of them.12

  And here is corroboration from the students’ side, in Kennebunk, Maine:

  I took AP US History last year…. Our textbook was the infamous The American Pageant. It quickly became an ongoing joke that whenever we learned about a new person, the class would ask his height, weight, and how many boats he had (recurring themes in the text)…. Though this was her first year teaching AP History, our teacher, Ms. Rebecca L. Moy, quickly realized that the text was nothing short of ridiculous. Throughout the year, Ms. Moy photocopied sections of various books as supplements to the text. We’d read a chapter in the text and then be required to read a chapter of The American Political Tradition, your Lies My Teacher Told Me, and various books by Richard LaFeber. At the end of the year, … we were assigned projects. Each person in the class had a question or a topic we had to present to the class. My topics were “The Vietnam Anti-War Movement and the Government’s Response,” and “The Iran-Contra Affair….” When it came time to take the AP test, no one received a lower grade than a 4.13

  The huge history textbook itself can deter teachers from teaching creatively. It seems to call out to be “covered,” even if not to be read. It must be important. Moreover, it is filled with innumerable lists—main ideas, key terms, people to remember, dates, skill activities, review identifications. These make the course look rigorous and factual, so teachers and students can imagine they are learning history. The problem is, however, that they aren’t. On the contrary, it’s the opposite of history, in a way. It’s remembering details but not using them to support (or not support) an interpretation. It’s learning (as in memorizing) but not thinking. It’s reading but not questioning. Instead of beginning with a question—hopefully a burning question—students begin with the answers, which they are supposed to memorize.

  Inadequacies in their own education deter some teachers from abandoning or challenging their textbooks. In college, many did not major in history or in a history-related discipline, as we saw in the Introduction. One in seven never had a single course in American history in college.14 Unsure of what is important, not knowing what it means to do history, such teachers are not ready to set their students free to do history or even to let them critique their textbooks.

  Related to feelings of inadequacy is teachers’ worry that they may lose control of their classroom if students sense that they can be challenged. Every semester I face this problem myself. The first time I am confronted intellectually, the first student objection to a point I just made, hits me right in the gut, or more accurately, in the ego. I feel threatened that my student may know more than I do about the point. I have to say to myself silently, “Wait! Don’t feel intimidated that your student knows more. Feel grateful! This is your chance to learn something.” Moreover, even if s/he turns out to be mistaken or misguided, teachers want to reward, not punish, class participation.

  If I have to remind myself not to feel threatened, after dealing with college undergraduates, it can be much more threatening to face correction or even mere amplification from a high school or middle school student. Isn’t the teacher supposed to know more than these children? Teachers do not have to know everything, however. Teachers who don’t know the answer to a question can admit it, and say they’ll come back with it tomorrow. Then their own quest to find out becomes a model for their students. Better yet, teachers can turn the question over to the class as a whole. What do they think is the answer? Will one of them vouchsafe to research the topic overnight?15

  It’s great when students go beyond their teachers. As soon as they are set free to do history (as Chapter 4 encourages), students will immediately learn more than their teacher about their topic, even if the teacher boasts a Ph.D. in history. Their expertise rebounds to their teacher’s credit. She has not “lowered” herself to her students’ level. The teacher is always in charge. She gives the grades, and she always expects excellent work.

  Some teachers worry that without a textbook to be “learned,” students will simply squabble. Indeed, teachers must allow students academic freedom. Model this by presenting multiple viewpoints to them. When they differ among themselves, encourage them to present their own viewpoints. Issues sometimes presented as matters of fact—for example, that the first people walked to the Americas over the Bering land bridge—are still unresolved, as Chapter 5 will show. Always remember, however, that while people have the right to their own opinion, they do not have the right to their own facts. They must back up their opinion with evidence—facts upon which all can agree. We shall see in chapters to come that some topics that have been presented as matters of opinion—the reason why the South seceded, for example—are matters of fact. All accounts are not equally valid. Just as geography teachers would disserve their students by letting them claim that the Earth was flat, history teachers must not allow them to disregard hard evidence for a given position, when such evidence exists.

  However, if some students believe that Columbus’s net impact upon Native Americans was for the better, bringing them the horse culture, Christianity, and so forth—while others hold that the arrival of Europeans and Africans led to centuries of depopulation and misery—the teacher’s job is not to tell one group that they are wrong. Teachers do not lose control of their classes, nor do they lose students’ respect, when they tolerate more than one point of view. On the contrary, teachers retain control and merit their students’ respect when they grant them freedom to disagree, including freedom to disagree with the teacher, so long as they back up their opinions with good work.

  Related to the fear of losing control of the classroom is worry that students won’t emerge from the class as good citizens. Too many teachers of U.S. history believe they need to present a course that gets their students to think well about their country. They want to produce good citizens, by which they mean nationalists, people who take pride in their country. Such thinking complements the red, white, and blue covers of most history textbooks. But it blurs an important distinction between patriotism and nationalism. Defining “the duty of a true patriot,” Frederick Douglass wrote: “He is a lover of his country who rebukes and does not excuse its sins.”16 Surely teachers want to produce patriots, not nationalists.

  Usually this notion that teachers must protect students from the truth is thoughtlessly fearful. A parent recently gave me an example. Her daughter’s 4th-grade teacher had asked each student to write a mini-biography of a “famous historical figure” and deliver it to the class on Parents Day. The girl chose Helen Keller. When she included the fact that Keller was a socialist in her biography, her teacher tried to stop her,
telling her that she could not present her report to the class unless she removed that information. Parental intervention saved the day, but we need to consider: What did the teacher fear? That students might become socialists if they learned Keller was one? That students might dislike Keller if they learned she became socialist? That parents might criticize the teacher for allowing such a “radical” report? Surely all this is foolish. The parent suggested it was just “a knee-jerk reaction.” The critical point is this: Once teachers step forth down this slippery slope of allowing such concerns to dictate what can and cannot be learned about the past, regardless of what actually happened, they are done for. Teaching what happened is our bedrock. When challenged by student, parent, or administrator, noting that students are learning what in fact happened is a powerful first defense.

  Our past is not so horrific that if teachers let students see what happened, they will become bad Americans. Surely we are teaching the course so that they might become good Americans—citizens able to think about the past and make intelligent decisions about the future. To do this, what students need is not feel-good history. Neither, of course, do they need guilt-ridden feel-bad history. They need to know what happened, what caused it, and what it in turn causes, even today.

  YOU ARE NOT ALONE

  As teachers wean their courses from the textbook, they need to know that they are setting forth down a well-trod path. Thousands of teachers have taken this journey, and newcomers can learn from their innovations as well as from their mistakes. The tiny annotated bibliographies at the end of each chapter in this book contain ideas from such successful teachers. The end of this chapter lists several websites that can help. Local colleagues may have recommendations—specific questions, movies, projects—that have worked for them.